Fragments
by LavenderAndTime
Summary: After all of their loss, it seems Trenzalore is not yet finished with the Doctor and Clara. When something on the planet's surface pulls the TARDIS back, can the Doctor find it within himself to stop these tribulations once and for all, even when he can't remember his past? Can Clara grow to accept him? Follows directly after "The Time of the Doctor."
1. The Moments After

_Fragments_

_One: The Moments After_

"Just one question! Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?"

As this new Doctor spoke these ill-fated words, every single muscle in Clara Oswald's body froze. She stared at him with clueless eyes, unable to speak. His lips had turned up into a manic grin; hers had fallen into a single circle of surprise. A cold chill ran up her spine and through the nerves in her neck.

This couldn't be the Doctor. No, this couldn't be him. Somehow, she must have fallen into a deep sleep back on Earth, back in her cozy apartment, before the Doctor came to take her to Trenzalore. Before her world fell into pieces... This situation- what was happening right now- was impossible. It had to be.

Because if it were real, then it was a nightmare.

The TARDIS was veering out of control. Clara could barely keep a solid grip on the railings, and her feet almost slid out from underneath her. If this man failed to pilot them to safety, they were as good as dead.

_Dead. The Doctor, _her_ Doctor... was already this..._

Before she could find herself swept away in hidden memories and emotions, her mind flashed back to the present. Barely any time had passed. The man in front of her who was clad in her Doctor's clothes- minus the bow tie, which was piled thoughtlessly on the floor beside him- was already flapping about the console wildly, flipping switches and slapping buttons. By now, the manic grin seen earlier was no more.

"If you're not prepared to give any sort of satisfying answer, I suppose I'll just have to experiment," he growled, and forcefully bent down a lever.

The TARDIS jolted, which nearly sent Clara sailing to the ceiling. Thankfully, she managed to hang on, and emerged from the shock with just a flip flop of her stomach. He pulled the monitor towards himself, and stopped to watch the Gallifreyan symbols flicker across the screen at a dizzying speed. His hands began treading dangerously close to some controls the Doctor had once warned her never to push while he was piloting the TARDIS...

"Stop! You can't use that while in flight!" she shouted over to him.

He frowned, and shoved the monitor around the track to her. "Fine, then. You're so smart, you want to give it a try?"

"No, I- Why can't you just remember?" she cried out suddenly over the sound of the ship's fazing time rotor, and pushed the monitor back.

"Remember what?"

She gaped at him incredulously. Did he know _anything_? "How to fly the TARDIS?"

The man ran his fingers through his mussed grey hair, slightly curly at the end. His steely blue eyes- startlingly different from her Doctor's green- peered curiously at her. He never stopped fiddling with the TARDIS's controls, but just for a moment, the universe and its danger was gone, and it was solely him and Clara. His gaze was just enough to make her hope that maybe- just maybe- a small part of her Doctor was still in there, as it should be.

"I've never known," he confided in her. "I failed my driving test. Now, I have a second question- who the hell are you? And how'd we get in this crashing time capsule?"

Her single, very human heart shattered, and all hopes were instantly dashed. He didn't remember her. If this man _was _still her Doctor, he would know who she was. She was Clara Oswald, his Impossible Girl, and she saved his life. Hell, she had saved his life thousands of times over. Tears built up in her eyes, but she couldn't let them fall. She would never let him see her cry.

For her, this was the last straw. If she were in a stable mental state at the time, she might have pestered him for having asked two questions instead of one, but right now she couldn't bear to speak.

"Who are you?" he pressed, staring at her much like he had been just after he was born.

"I'm Clara Oswald," she said. The TARDIS rattled underfoot, which knocked a tear from its perch on the crease of her eyelid. It hit her cheek, and began the long, burning journey down the slope of her face. "I'm the Doctor's friend- _your _friend. Your traveling companion. You dropped into my world one day and turned it completely around. Every Wednesday, you pick me up and take me on the adventure of a lifetime. We laugh, and joke, and get into quite a lot of scrapes, but it's always worth it. Because you are always there, and I can always rely on you."

Her voice hitched, tears now streaming down her face, glinting like starlight. His expression was still blank, unknowing.

"Please," she whispered. "Please say something, anything, to let me know you remember who I am. Please let me rely on you again."

His mouth opened to reply, but the TARDIS hit another rough spot and veered out of control. Sparks flew from the console. Some landed in Clara's hair. She screeched in surprise, and her hand rapidly snapped up to flick them away. The rings at the top of the time rotor were spinning like crazy every-which-way.

In a desperate attempt to regain dominance, the man kicked the bottom of the console, and reaffirmed a strong grip on two levers. Grunting, he slammed them down in opposite directions. Clara watched as he practically flew towards the monitor to observe the readings. His thick brows furrowed.

"Something's caught our signal. It's pulling us in," he reported.

**WHAM**

Both Clara and him were thrown to the ground as something in one of the side console panels blew. The cloister bells began ringing. Clara got up slowly, rubbing her head where it had hit the railing, but the Doctor shot up like a rocket. As if he never left it, he was back at the computer screen.

"We're being pulled to somewhere called... Trenzalore?"

Clara was about to respond, but then the TARDIS's engines shut off, and struggling to keep control, they began their reckless descent to the planet's surface.

Well, damn. They just couldn't be rid of the vile place, it seemed. And if her fears were correct, things were about to get really ugly...

* * *

**I was thinking about Capaldi's entrance, and for some reason it seemed like he didn't recognize Clara. So my mind went crazy, and I wrote this. Hope you all enjoy!**


	2. Memories As Soft As Echoes

_Fragments_

_Two: Memories As Soft As Echoes_

When the ship became still, it was hard not to notice. The change from raucous commotion to silence was bone-shaking. Few things were left in motion. Two immediately sprang to mind: the time rotor, which still silently pumped up and down, and the circular lights positioned around the perimeter of the room. They all had a pulsing, rotating red light- a tiny pinprick, really- that spun around and around and around, making it a dizzy duty to track it.

The TARDIS seemed to have landed right side up. It was one of the few pieces of good news. That meant she could stand up safely if she wanted to. Clara Oswald wanted to stand up more than anything, but right now she couldn't will her muscles to obey.

She coughed, a deep wheezing cough that hurt her lungs just listening to herself. Glancing around, it was still very smoky in the console room. There was no fire. Another bit of good news. But where was _he_? This new Doctor...?

"Oh, my stars," she cried, finally locating him sprawled on the hard metal floor behind her. Finally taking control of her muscles, she tumbled over to him. He seemed to be unconscious. There was a gash on his forehead, and a small line of blood trailing down the left side of his face. His mouth was pressed into a hard line, but his jaw remained relaxed. His grey hair had been slicked back by sweat.

He was very different. However, the more she looked at him, the more she saw whispers of her Doctor. The wrinkles at the corners of his closed eyes disappeared. Suddenly he appeared youthful... daring... maybe even kind. In her mind, he opened his steel blue eyes. They were deep and wise, echoes of all the lives now past. If she poured hard enough, she just knew she'd see the bright green irises of her first Doctor, hidden behind... He extended her hand out to her.

"Clara," he called. His voice had a bit of a Scottish lilt. "Clara, I _am _the Doctor. And if we're going to get out of here, you need to trust me."

"But you changed," she sobbed.

"We all change," he pressed desperately. "Some do more than others. You became braver, and I became foolish for it. My face may have changed, but we're still the same people! Clara, please."

She gazed up at him, eyes wet with tears. Finally, with a grunt, she managed to reach her hand up to his. His fingers locked securely around hers, and pulled her gently to her feet.

Clara gasped, opening her eyes. The Doctor still lay on the ground. He was still unconscious. She had been daydreaming.

About a meter to the side was her old Doctor's bow tie. Dazedly, she reached over to retrieve it. She held it to his neck, trying to remember the days of her floppy-haired Doctor, one last time. When she couldn't bear to see the length of burgundy cloth anymore, she stuffed it in the pocket of her sweater. He looked better without it now, anyways.

"Wake up," she whispered, tears on the verge of falling again. "Please wake up. Doctor... Please hear me..."

Her head fell onto his chest, where she could feel the steady beating of his two hearts. There was the final proof. This _was _the Doctor, whether she liked it or not.

"Do get your head off my chest, would you," she heard a familiar Scottish voice muffle. Her head snapped up immediately. He seemed alert, although dazed, and he was currently looking at- dear lord, her eyes weren't bloodshot, were they?

"Sorry, I was just..."

"Crying on my shoulder, yes," he replied airily, and used the console to pull himself to his feet.

It didn't take long for him to notice the blood dripping from the gash on his head, just below the hairline. With a heavy sigh, he pressed both hands to the wound and steadily breathed in. Somehow, when he removed them, the injury was completely gone. He must have healed it. It took a few seconds for her to realize she was staring.

"Fifteen hours," was all the explanation he gave on the matter, as if expecting her to immediately understand what this meant. Unsurprisingly, she didn't.

Clara watched as the Doctor yanked the monitor towards him- it was sticking to the rail a bit this time- and attempted to comprehend the circular text on it. A few of the buttons on the side were missing. His finger accidentally slipped into one of their plug holes.

"Dammit!" he growled, yanking his finger out. It must have zapped him. He stuck it in his mouth, and sucked on it for a few seconds while reading. "I'm assuming the surface of the planet is safe. For now."

"We should probably check outside, yeah?"

"Hmm," he said, and nodded stiffly.

She sighed, and watched somberly as the Time Lord shed his predecessor's purple frock coat onto the jump seat and began marching to the ship's exit. He grabbed the cool handles, and with a familiar lack of grace, tried pulling the doors in. When he failed to open the wooden doors, he started to rattle them, muttering all the while.

Clara ambled over to the main console, and simply flipped a single switch that she had observed her Doctor using a few times before. "I believe you forgot the door lock," she told him.

(When her Doctor forgot things, she had always teased him for it, but there was no humor in this for her today.)

His shoulders fell, perhaps with just the slight inclination of embarrassment. "Ah. Thank you... Oh, what was it? Claire? Clara?"

"Clara," she supplied, her hopes falling once again.

"I see," he muttered, and started to open the doors that protected them from the chill of Trenzalore. She stopped him, slamming them closed before they could see the planet outside. There was something, a question lurking in her mind, that had been haunting her this entire time.

"I have a question for you this time," she said, and peered at him, almost fearfully. "How much can you actually remember?"

The Doctor looked up towards the ceiling for just a moment. He took a deep breath. "I can remember almost all of my youth, from early adolescence to around my late 220s," he explained, halfway telling the story with his hands. "I know I'm a lot older than that, however. I also am aware that I call myself 'the Doctor.'"

Well, things were probably worse than she had expected. Just hours ago, the Doctor had told her he was over two thousand years old. Assuming he had no reason to lie about that, it was immediately clear that something had gone seriously wrong with this Doctor's memory.

"The latest memory I have is that I've just regenerated into this body," he continued, "and its kidneys don't properly match!"

Clara crossed her arms. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. How can you even tell if your kidneys match or not?"

"Oh, don't think too much on it. We've already got trouble, and I don't need the distraction," he blew her comment off. Inside, she found her spirits dampening more and more. This man was so... different from the Doctor she had grown to love. And she feared it was due mainly to his missing memories.

_I thought you said you wouldn't forget your past, _Clara blearily thought. _Not one line of it, not one day._

Though it was a bleak way of thinking about it, he technically hadn't lied. He didn't forget _one_ day, he forgot all of them. It was a tradgedy like this that she couldn't allow happen. So right then and there, she made a silent pact to help him regain his memories, any way she could. She'd saved him before, she'd save him again.

"Trenzalore?" he prompted; his hand was once again gripped securely around the door handle.

"Trenzalore," she whispered, although a voice in the back of her head informed her that the Doctor also didn't know the severity of what this quiet backwater planet had taken from them.

And Clara didn't know how to get her Doctor back.


	3. Shattered Oblivion

_Fragments_

_Three: Shattered Oblivion_

When Clara stepped outside, she felt like something had punched her in the gut. She could recognize this feeling; it was the same sensation she had endured the last time she was on Trenzalore. It was emptiness, an emptiness that consumed her from the very center of her heart to the tips of the hairs on her arms. Her head began pounding. Perspiration trickled down her forehead. A stale wind flowed by as she turned to look at the eerily familiar desolation spread out around her. Tombstones- both innocuous little markers and monumental structures- littered the bleak landscape.

No. It wasn't bleak; that word was too kind for her surroundings. It was oblivion.

Her body began to wrack involuntarily with cold shivers. This was wrong. This was completely wrong. They'd saved Trenzalore, hadn't they? Christmas Town had been saved, the Daleks destroyed...

She gasped. Suddenly her stomach began to feel queasy. There was a pressure there- a squeezing; pulling, shifting pressure- that felt like every atom of her existence was about to fall apart. Her breath quickened in pace. She hugged herself, trying to make the searing pain go away.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was too busy scrutinizing the outer shell of the TARDIS to notice the graveyard. He gently ran his hand down the blue box's smooth wooden side, eyes wide with curiosity.

"Aren't you curious... Billions of disguises to choose from, and you choose this odd blue police box," he said quietly, more to the TARDIS than anyone else. "Would have thought you'd masquerade as a tomb."

Clara, still hugging her abdomen, strained to glance up. "It's looked like that for hundreds of years. Some sort of circuit's broken."

If he heard what she said, then he didn't reply. Instead, he ran towards some concrete stairs. The steps had long sense dilapidated, and by this day didn't lead anywhere. It offered a wide view of Trenzalore's war-stricken surface, however. He stood there tall, his muscles rigid, and observed the wreckage. In that moment, he didn't look like the compassionate Doctor she'd come to know. He looked like a Time Lord- proud and naïve- with a superiority complex.

"There must have been a war here," he stated indifferently, hands thrust in pockets. "A grrreat, gigantic war."

Clara didn't think she would ever get used to the way this Doctor rolled his r's. As her mind drifted, her abdomen throbbed once again, and she struggled not to cry out. Carefully, her arm latched around her midsection, and she hesitantly stepped up the stairs towards him.

"It was the Siege of Trenzalore," she explained, gasping for air in the planet's stale atmosphere. "You were protecting the town that was here for... for years and years, but your enemies finally broke through. Y-you died trying to save them."

Those last few words fell out in a flurried cluster, much faster than the Doctor could comprehend them. When the auditory portion of his brain seemed to finally match up with the computing sector, his mouth bobbed up and down. He was utterly speechless. With nothing else of importance to say, Clara was as well. So together, the two of them stood at the edges of their separate realities; one of them cursed with unwanted memories, and the other doomed to forget.

Clara Oswald watched her breath turn into condensation, and as that condensation blew into the distance to join the fog bank that was beginning to fall upon the mass graveyard. As she observed the ghastly reality around her, she had a most unpleasant thought. What if she had a tombstone, somewhere out there? She grimaced.

There was no way to know for sure, but it was likely that she did.

"I've been here once before," she whispered hoarsely then, "in the aftermath, but this is wrong. I changed time, and I _saved you_!"

At this, the Doctor- standing directly next to her- swiveled to attention.

"What do you mean, '_you saved me_?'" he growled.

"What does it sound like?"

His lip curled up in disgust. "It sounds like you've been bending time to your own likings. I would highly advise against that, for She does not often enjoy being tampered with," he spat, and shot a sharpened dagger of a glance at her. The way he looked at her, she might as well have been one of the monstrous Zygon.

He turned on a dime, and began to amble down the broken-down steps, leaving Clara to stand there with a growing emptiness in her heart. There was no shattering this time; by now there were no more pieces of her heart large enough _to_ break in half. It was already in fragments. What she had to do now was find a way to pick up the pieces.

"Do you know what the signal is coming from, or not?" she questioned him sullenly. She still stared at his turned back, consistently doing double takes because _this man looked so much like her green-eyed Doctor from behind. _Forgetting the grey hair; their body structure was very similar, and coupled with his predecessor's waistcoat, it made for a close resemblance.

The Doctor glanced back, breaking her hazy spell of remembrance. "Whatever pulled us off course, it has to be something massive," he mentioned offhand. "Something with revolutionary temporal capabilities," he continued, searching lazily across the sky until his eyes landed on something of interest, "something like that!"

She peered in the direction his finger was pointing, and found only two things: dread, and a gigantic, blue, size-leaked time capsule. A bolt of pain tore through her side once again, causing her to gasp.

"Is that our ship?" he asked, and she could see the uneasiness drawn on his face.

"Yeah."

"Did you see her when you were here before?"

"Yeah. Bad, then?"

"You could say that," he muttered. He scratched at his head. "I think we can now proclaim with certainty where our mysterious signal came from."

Clara frowned, and continued to stare at the dying TARDIS in the hills beyond. She didn't quite know how to explain it, but there was just something about it that felt... Off. She blinked. No matter what she did, that feeling was always there. It was like it was somehow calling her, beckoning her to come closer, for her to see the light.

"Well," she muttered, and began to step towards the distant hillside. "No time like the present. Let's go to-"

Her words became punctuated by a cry of pain. At at once, the world's colors flashed and throbbed and glowed. She drifted in and out of awareness for just a millisecond, and when she came to again, her surroundings were _not _the same. All off a sudden, the war-torn oblivion was gone, and replaced with the very town they had just left. Townspeople skittered about, picking up minor debris from that last Dalek attack.

"But that's-" she stuttered, flabbergasted.

_Impossible, _her subconscious completed. _But of course, impossible doesn't exist when you're in the world of the Doctor._

"This is fascinating," the man himself gushed, having popped up by Clara's side. A wide grin (the sort that was gleeful for all the wrong reasons) crossed his face as he began to jump back and forth, one step towards Clara... one step away. One towards... one away. She could only imagine the jarring experience his senses were getting right now.

"This is definitely the same place on the globe, and the same time period. It's like there's two realities bleeding into each other," he said. "One where everything perished in bloodshed, and one where most survived." He pointed at the ground beneath his feet. "Right here- where I'm standing- is just one of the edges, one of the thresholds, where the dual realities are separated. By now, however, I sense that one reality could not fully exist without the other... They're wrapped around each other, they've got codependence."

"Okay, but why?" she pressed, still confused.

His mouth was a disapproving line. "You said you changed time, Clara. This here... The world in fragments... This would be the consequence."

The Doctor extended one foot in front of him. The moment it landed on the dull brickwork of Christmas Town's rickety streets, he doubled over with a wheeze of discomfort. Alarmed, she ran forwards to help, shaking off the weird disconnected sensation she felt as she crossed over a second threshold, and Trenzalore became an empty graveyard once more.

"What's wrong?" Clara cried, helping him to squat. She looked on in horror as his complexion became ashen and sickly. His eyes called out in fear as a dim glow began to radiate from underneath the skin of his neck.

"I-I'm not quite sure," he stuttered. "It feels like my regeneration might somehow be _reversing-"_

At that moment, his mouth involuntarily jerked wide, and a stream of the golden energy wafted into the air. Both of then watched it flutter into the sky. Their sight was fixed on the excess regenerative energy until it finally disappeared beyond their foreseeable horizons.

"_Not _reversing, then," he proclaimed, still staring dazedly into the distance. "Just excess from my last regeneration. I suppose that's to be expected."

"So you're fine, then, everything's okay?" Clara queried with a hopeful smile.

"No," the Doctor replied slowly. There was evidence of active contemplation on his brow. "I'm still dying. Or I'm already dead, it depends on one's perspective. You said you changed time to save my life, and that single decision split reality into halves; two sides are _literally_ at war for domination. Currently, my body can't figure out which side is true and which is false, so I am both dead and alive simultaneously. You probably are, as well."

Suddenly, neurons in her mind connected, and she began to make sense of the situation. So _this_ was why her body had felt terrible; when she could feel the emptiness, she was feeling death. It was the effects of the other timeline, which were seeping through to this reality. In the other turn of events, where the Doctor died and Trenzalore ended as a tombstone-encrusted battlefield, she was dead. Her broken, lifeless body lied somewhere in that ground...

Now suitably creeped out, Clara shivered. It appeared this situation was worlds more complicated than originally imagined.


	4. The Forgotten Past

_Fragments_

_Four: The Forgotten Past_

Clara and the Doctor trudged on through the mud and the debris, trying to creep ever closer to the source of the signal. The TARDIS, once in a far-away place, was now a monument looming overhead. On the way, Clara had counted around forty-five time fragments, forty-five places on the surface where they passed between the two separate realities.

Her ears popped suddenly as she walked down the nice cobblestone path, and gasping, she slammed her eyes. When she pried them open again, they were back in the mass graveyard. She shivered, chilled from the tips of her feet to the very last hairs on her head. The temperature had just dropped significantly, and she wasn't wearing many layers.

"Forty-six," she whispered, and scrunched her nose. She always had hated mud. Whenever possible, she'd try to avoid it.

"Still counting fragments, Miss Oswald?" the Doctor said, inhaling airily.

"Can't help it," she muttered. "What if we get to the TARDIS, and it's not there because we're in a fragment where Christmas Town wasn't destroyed? What happens then?" she asked frantically. "Why do we need to head over there anyhow? Why the TARDIS?"

The Doctor couldn't bear to look at her for some reason, and so continued to stare straight ahead into the mellowing darkness. His mouth was a taunt line, his eyes glossed over in guilt. "That _TARDIS_," he said, pointing, "is where the signal that pulled us here came from."

"I know that. But why do we have to follow it? Why can't we just leave?"

"It's keeping us latched to this world, this reality," he pressed, his brows threading together. "It located our ship, pulled it in... It's like the rock at the center of the shattered window. And you can't repair a window until you remove the rock."

He didn't say anything more on the matter, but Clara could definitely tell that there was something important he wasn't telling her. Sighing, she attempted to step forward carefully, because there were thick roots bursting out of the moist ground here. Her foot quivered as she lifted it up and beyond the root, but then she lost balance and slipped.

Her knee hit the tough fibers of the tree root, and a wildfire of pain instantly blossomed through her nerves. She cried out, but the sound quickly devolved into a horse rasp. Feeling for the entire world she was falling apart in agony- first the emptiness of death, and now this- she fell over on her side. Her head lolled into a patch of mud, and for a brief second she worried the stench would be what finally killed her. Clara whimpered as she felt the icky mud ooze between her hair, but she hadn't the strength to move.

A hand then roved in front of her face. The Doctor's. She accepted it thankfully, and groaned deeply as she put pressure on her right knee again. He slung an arm around her shoulder, helping as her crutch. Dazedly, she looked up at him, sensing a glint of friendly compassion in his hearts.

"Chin up," he said quietly. "We're getting close."

**~8~**

They plodded on together, as one unit yet separate, completely trusting yet simultaneously distrusting. The Doctor had no recollection of her, and Clara felt like she didn't entirely know him.

_Yet..._

There was still hope, twinkling like a point of starlight. There was still another day. Her actions- saving the Doctor- had ensured that.

Clara counted about ten more fragments on their walk. Every time they crossed one now, she would wrap both arms tightly around the Doctor's midsection and close her eyes. The experience would be less jarring for her senses. They stepped across the fifty-seventh fissure, from the remains of Christmas Town into a puddle in a graveyard. A blot of lightning snaked through the angry clouds, producing much-needed light for just a millisecond.

"Stop," Clara wheezed, her body refusing to go on any further. "I need to rest."

The Doctor helped her sit on a tombstone that seemed to have snapped in half. The stone was washed smooth from years of erosion. As he paced in a clearing to her side, she adjusted herself on the hard rock. To her great annoyance, she felt her right leg go completely numb. Fabulous. Now, on top of her midsection, she couldn't feel one of her legs. But as she was just beginning to silently gripe about it, she heard an exceedingly familiar voice in the distance. In her mind's eye, she could already see his floppy hair, his dorky bow tie, the pants that stopped just short of his ankles... Tears were at the crease of her lids, and she _almost_ called his name.

Then she saw his TARDIS, and the brunette woman who stood next to him. And she realized suddenly that she had lived through this before.

"Doctor, get down!" Clara hissed as quietly as she could. She motioned behind a large grave marker. The Doctor seemed confused, but he did as told anyways. She ducked down herself, and peered across the graveyard to listen.

"You okay?" past-Clara asked a few meters ahead of them. "You're visiting your own grave. Anyone would be scared."

Her green-eyed, floppy haired Doctor spoke up, nervously thumbing his fingers. "It's more than that. I'm a time traveller. I've probably time-travelled more than anyone else."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning my grave is potentially the most dangerous place in the universe." With a small smile, he offered an arm to his Clara Oswald. "Shall we?"

Linked arm-in-arm, the two walked into the distance, leaving the Doctor and the Clara of the future staring at them, mouths agape.

"Is that what I used to look like?" the grey-haired Doctor asked quietly.

"Yes. We just crossed our own timelines," she replied in a hush whisper, eyes peeled open in shock. "It's still not happened for them yet."

"What's not happened yet?"

She pulled herself to her feet with a moan of pain, relying on the tombstone for balance.

"We'll have to hurry," she told him, panting.

"What do you mean?" he asked, starting to fret a little. The edge of Clara's lip turned up. It was very clear he liked being in control, and without about ninety percent of his memories, being in control was very difficult...

"I know how we can reach the TARDIS quicker," she whispered, and her gaze fell upon a nonchalant tombstone in the distance.

**~8~**

The two crept down the stairs at River's fake tombstone, following at a good distance behind their past counterparts. The darkness slowly began to envelop them as they walked further and further from the ambient light on the surface. Soon, she could not see anything, not even the imperfections of the rough stonewall. Her free hand reached to her side, and she began to feel around for the wall so she could vaguely know where she was going. Warily, Clara wondered if this was what the blind felt like.

If it weren't for the fact that they had basically crossed their own timelines here, then _they_ could light a torch, but their past selves couldn't know they were there. She remembered that it had taken her floppy-haired Doctor a while to find something that would work as a torch. If they were lucky, they would have light in a minute or so. She readjusted her left arm over the steely eyed Doctor's shoulders, and wordlessly, they hobbled on.

Finally, a flickering light appeared ahead of them, and her eyes rapidly drank in the wonders of sight. That was more like it! Now they could easily find their way around without stumbling in the dark.

"Where are we?" her past self whispered to her Doctor.

"Catacombs."

"I hate catacombs."

Clara almost smirked as she mouthed her distaste for tomb-like passageways along with her younger self. Out of this whole misadventure, these moments before she had jumped into the Doctor's time stream were what had remained in the forefront of her mind ever since. They were the last memories they created together before the time winds shattered her into echoes.

"I still hate them," she muttered offhand to the man standing next to her. "Always have."

"On Gallifrey, the catacombs are where the forges burn, where the machinery is scraped..." the Doctor thought out loud, his irises glossed over in remembrance. "Only the lowest of the low work down there. I think everyone hates catacombs."

Clara had to look away when she realized he was talking about his home planet in present tense. He thought it was still out there, sitting among the stars. He didn't know it was lost in a pocket universe. In ways, she was beginning to envy him for forgetting his past. She knew she had promised herself to help him get his memories back, but her Doctor had been such a tortured soul. Wouldn't everything be so much better if he- they- could just forget?

"We haven't passed through a fragment for a while," she observed, pushing her innermost thoughts away for now.

The Doctor simply nodded. "I've noticed."

Her brows scrunched up. "I feel like you're not taking this seriously. What if we pass through one now, and this tunnel was never built in the town? We'd be trapped, and we'd suffocate!"

His lips turned into a thin line. A flash of anger rushed through his eyes. He stopped walking, and propped Clara against the wall. Her throat constricted as he grabbed her right wrist.

"You're making the assumption I haven't taken time to consider any of these possibilities," he told her frankly, "but I'm a Time Lord. All we ever _do _is consider possibilities! Yes, we haven't passed through a fragment in an abnormal amount of time. Yes, it would be bad if we did. But we simply don't have time to worry about those things right now. We have to reach the ship's console room if we're going to fix this."

"We _can't_, they'll be in there!"

"Then we'll wait," he fired back.

"To do what?" she asked then, going to great lengths to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach as she tried to step towards him. "This whole time, and you haven't said what your plan is, why not?" She stared at him expectantly, arms wide. He looked at the ground, actively avoiding her gaze. "Doctor, _why not_?"

"Just trust me."

Clara almost snorted. "Trust you? You don't even know me anymore," she cried out. "You told me you wouldn't forget, not one day, but you lied! You've forgotten almost everything!"

"That's why I _need_ you to trust me!" he snapped. His voice echoed off the walls. Everything became quiet. "_Please_. I know nothing. I feel like I can't even trust myself."

Her heart fell at this, and suddenly she felt guilty. Why was she being so selfish? Had it taken this long for her to realize that the Doctor had suffered a greater blow than her? She'd lost one persona of this Time Lord she'd grown to love, but he'd lost hundreds of years. They couldn't yell at each other like this anymore. If they were going to get out of this nightmare, they had to work together, even if it meant that secrets were not shared sometimes. Friendship did not mean that one was entitled to know everything.

"Sorry," she whispered rapidly, tears on the cusp of her eyelids. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I'm sorry."

Weeping, she wrapped her mud-covered arms around his body, and for the first time, he responded by doing the same.

**~8~**

Time passed. Corridors were crossed. Rusted doors were pried open. Clara struggled to breathe in the thin air. It was thinner here than it was on the surface. Her head lolled back on the Doctor's shoulder. By now, she was so weak that walking on her injured knee wasn't an option. Her body was curled up in his arms now. She had to rely on him.

She breathed as deeply as she could, feeling the stale oxygen rush through her lungs. The world around her was a blurred kaleidoscope of muted colors now. There were a lot of deep blues, greys, and browns, colors that were somber and moody. Every once in a while she might see a reassuring flash of white or yellow. Her hearing was muffled, only picking up occasional mutterings from the Doctor, even though his mouth was right next to her ear. The one sense that was working proficiently was her sense of touch. She could feel his double heartbeat thump comfortably against her broken and weary body, and in fact it was the only thing that convinced her that she was still conscious.

The door to the console room was locked again. Her old Doctor had sealed it as they left his tomb that first time. The Doctor of the present readjusted her in his arms, and stepped forwards without hesitation. He parted his lips, and Clara listened in wonder as a beautiful, swirling language came forth, so complicated she could never dream of replicating it. There was a dull clunk, and the passageway quickly opened.

He entered the console room, and immediately a feeling of dread came upon Clara. Her pupils could just make out the outline of the room, but her vision was quickly fading. This was a place she never wanted to return to; it was what she had nightmares about.

"So this is where I end up," he whispered.

"Used to," she managed to croak in reply. "Not anymore."

Carefully, he laid her down on the ground. She was thankful for the grass-like plant that grew like a weed here. At the very least she would have something soft to rest her head on. Her knee throbbed. She wished beyond all else she had more strength so she could sit up and check it. All she could do was look ahead at the blurry outline of the Doctor, who stood at his time stream.

"This is my entire timeline," he whispered in wonder. "Every single day I've ever lived."

A flash of pain seared through her body. She cried out in pain, coming increasingly close to blacking out. In a miracle, she managed to keep consciousness, only to see him reach out towards the hazy, swirling tendrils of light. Suddenly, she panicked, and began to sweat. He wasn't stepping into his own time stream again, was he?

...No, he wasn't. But she could vaguely see some of those tendrils of light run up his proffered arm and run fingers through his short grey hair before disappearing into oblivion. The Doctor stumbled away from the swirling pillar of time, panting.

"What are we supposed to do here?" she asked weakly.

At the sound of her voice, he hurried to her side and knelt next to her. "I'm sorry for my behavior, Clara, I really should explain."

The sight of his face became more and more distant as he continued to speak.

"This ship- _my ship_- in this reality, is all that is keeping us anchored here. If-" he choked back tears- "if I kill her, in the most humane way possible, then we can... we can... Clara? Clara?"

She tried to breath, but she couldn't. She tried to move her hand, or incline her neck just a tad to let him know that she was still alive, but she couldn't. She felt his arms cradle her head in desperation, but she couldn't see him.

"Clara?!"

_Thu-thump._

"No, no! Clara? Can you hear me, Clara?"

_Thu-thump._

"_Clara?!_"

_Thu-_


	5. Still The Doctor

_Fragments_

_Five: Still The Doctor_

_The light, affectionate kisses pressed to my forehead were what awakened me. I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes- because physically, I was an exhausted wreck- but there was a warmth in my heart that grew fonder as his gentle hand smoothed a strand of loose hair from the side of my face. Content, a quiet sigh escaped my lips. I knew who my visitor was, who it always would be._

_I felt the man cup his palm around my cheek one last time before contact was lost. A fire still lingered under my skin, still fresh from his touch. Feeling slightly abandoned, I stirred awake. My eyelids flicked open, and I waited a second for my vision to adjust. He bent over the nightstand table by the side of my hospital bed, scribbling something on a thin slip of paper. The table was so short that he had to bend over like a stork. His dark brown hair flopped over his face like a curtain, obscuring his eyes. He didn't seem to realize I was watching him._

_When he finished writing on the small paper, he pushed it to the back of the nightstand, right under his burgundy bow tie, the one I had slipped into my pocket a time ago. His fingers paused over the silky material for a moment. His lips pressed together, expressing fond remembrance. Then, before I could reach out for him, that ancient time traveling man I loved so much turned towards the door to leave alone._

_"No, wait," came a raspy call I didn't consciously make. "Doctor..."_

_He paused. And turned around. Light glinted off his deep green irises. His lips were slightly agape; his hands stiff by his pockets. Guilt filled those big sad eyes._

_"Hello, Clara," he said weakly. The sound of his voice- just as I remembered it- nearly brought me to tears._

_"How are you even here?" I asked him. "Are you... are you real?"_

_A smile stretched across his face, glowing in the light of the sun that poured through the window. "I can assure you, most definitely real."_

_I laughed- __perhaps because I wasn't sure what else to do in the situation- but the action somehow seemed empty now. "I don't understand how this is possible," I whispered. "You changed."_

_Any and all happiness that had come upon him washed away in an instant. Blood drained from his veins in his cheeks, leaving his skin ashen._

_"Well, I'm going to," he replied, his line of sight falling upon the ground. He clasped his hands together nervously. "Haven't really gotten to that part yet. Thought I'd at least make a few calls, say goodbye..."_

**~8~**

Light pressed upon Clara's eyelids, becoming an unwanted weight as she slowly came back from the recesses of her mind. An unknown force seemed to pin her in place like a target on a dartboard. Her fingers were stiff, and her legs twitched from lack of use. A quiet moan pushed past her lips, one she wasn't aware of making.

There was a voice, as well.

"Miss Oswald? Miss?"

It was a woman's, light and gentle.

"Miss Oswald, are you awake?"

She arched her head back and yawned. Gently, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and murmured a quiet "yes" in response to the nurse's question. The young woman nodded, and then proceeded to set a small tray of food at her bedside table. Clara could see the nurse's face as she knelt down, and she quickly did a double take. She could make out whiskers, grey fur, and a petite nose. Amazed, she struggled to keep from staring too much. The woman was a _cat_. There was actually a species of intelligent, talking cats. Instantly fascinated, she decided she'd ask the Doctor about the species later; he could probably talk about them for centuries and still manage to get her home in time for tea.

Oh.

The Doctor.

She suddenly found herself regretting that she had ever reminded herself about him. He had regenerated _and _forgotten his past, including her. It seemed he was a completely different man. For all she knew, he'd just left her here. But how did she even get here in the first place? The last memories she had were of being caught between realities on Trenzalore, in a place they couldn't escape from. She'd broken her knee, and they'd crossed their timelines and yelled at each other a few times. The very last thing she had been aware of before she passed out was the Time Lord finally beginning to tell her how he planned to fix everything.

It seemed a lot happened while she was unconscious.

Clara managed to sit up in bed, reveling in the feel of individual vertebrae bending into place once more. She glanced at the bedside table, and at the generic food the nurse had put there. Her nurse now roamed around the room, messing with an electronic display here and there.

"How long have I been here?" Clara asked hesitantly, kneading her hands in her lap.

The nurse turned around with a reassuring smile. "Almost two weeks. You were in a mild coma for most of it, and only came out a few days ago. Yesterday we performed surgery on your knee. Should be as good as new."

"Thank you," Clara expressed sincerely, glad that for once, someone was explaining things to her. She could actually feel her leg now, no doubt because of a successful surgery. A closer look at her nurse revealed a small name badge slung around her neck. Novice Sari, it read. "And... where is this?"

"That's right, he said you were an off-worlder," Novice Sari said with a small chuckle. "You're on New Earth, love, in the Sisters of Observance Hospital."

Clara began to poke at the food on her tray then, satisfied enough with the answer. It wasn't as if Sari could get any more specific, and recite the distance from this room to her apartment on Earth measured in kilometers, rounded to one hundredth. The food on the transparent dish was pale and orange. It seemed to be a type of fleshy fruit, mashed up like applesauce. Daringly, she spooned a bit into her mouth, and swallowed. Hmm. It was definitely fruit. It wasn't the best tasting fruit she'd ever had, but it was digestible.

Then, she noticed what sat next to the tray. Fat tears built up in her eyes. Just when she thought she might be able to forget him, a reminder comes in the shape of his old burgundy bow tie. Whoever had changed her into the hospital gown must have taken special care to retrieve this from the pocket of her cardigan sweater, which narrowed the list down to one time traveling, two-hearted individual.

It was petty and selfish, but Clara still felt betrayed by him. The last thing she wanted to do was confront him, if he was still here. She didn't know what would be worse: confronting him face to face, or learning that she had been left here alone. The only thing she knew for certain was that right now, she envied him for forgetting.

She reached for the strip of cloth, but to her surprise found a thin strip of paper as well, intertwined within.

_He's still the Doctor, Clara_, it read in his uniquely mussed handwriting. The Doctor's, but not the new Doctor. It was the handwriting of her green-eyed, floppy haired Doctor. Tears prickled up from the corners of her eyes, and her chest felt tight.

Instantly, details of her most recent dream slammed into the forefront of her mind. He came into the room at dawn. He stroked her cheek and gently kissed her forehead. And then he wrote a note, and slid it next to his old bow tie. In her dream, she had spoken a few words with him before he left. Now, however, she was becoming more and more sure that it wasn't a dream. It was her Doctor's way of saying goodbye, properly this time.

Anger boiled up within her, anger not directed at him this time, but at herself. The Doctor had known she would react this way the entire time. He knew she would have trouble accepting him after he regenerated. Why? Because she liked to be the boss, and time wasn't letting her. It was the black spot on her ledger, her major flaw. Change was her enemy.

She heard people walking down the hall outside her door. Her heart pounding, she shoved the bow tie and the slip of paper under her covers.

"Good morning, Doctor," she could hear Sari say from just outside the room. "I almost expected you to be here already when I came in an hour earlier. You've rarely left her side on most days."

"I had tasks to accomplish," a familiar Scottish voice replied. "Is she awake now?"

"Yes. Just woke up minutes ago. She asked me where she was, and how long she'd been here, so I answered truthfully."

"Thank you, Novice Sari."

She heard the rustle of cloth, and a body moving closer. Rapidly, Clara blotted the leftover wetness from her eyes, and sat up in bed. He walked in slowly, even cautiously. She didn't blame him. Up until a minute ago, she had no inclination to see him at all.

He had changed his clothes in the past few weeks, something she'd expected. Now that it had happened, however, things were becoming all too real. Gone were the days of bow ties, high water pants, and pocket watch chains. He had combed his grey hair back. His choice of attire was relatively simple, a white shirt layered underneath a cardigan. Beyond that, he wore a deep blue coat, with thin lapels and silky red lining. It was very... different. But the longer she stared at him, the more he looked exactly like the Doctor. She couldn't deny it any longer; this _was_ her friend.

"That's a good choice of clothes," she said quietly, blinking rapidly to try to avoid crying.

"You think so?" he asked, obviously pleased to have her approval.

"Yeah. It suits you," she replied, swallowing hard.

However, her throat was so dry there was nothing for her muscles to move. It was nerves that caused this; she had no idea what kind of conversation they would get into. Itching to move, she carefully swung her legs out from under the covers. These starchy hospital blankets were becoming so warm that she was almost boiling underneath. She glanced back up towards the Doctor. He was staring at her with the weirdest expression on his face.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You're still Clara Oswald," he breathed.

Her left brow flexed, unsure what he was trying to get at. "And you're still the Doctor."

"No, it's just that... I thought you were dead."

A warmth grew inside her because of his words. It was surprisingly touching that he had worried about her. "Well, sorry to hand it to you, but I'm not dying anytime soon, mister."

A faint smile crossed his lips, but quickly disappeared. Clara thought for a second that her floppy haired Doctor would have chuckled at that. Then, realizing what her mind was doing, she suppressed those thoughts. She _had_ to move on.

"I've regained my memories," he said next. "Thought you should know."

"How?"

"My time stream," he replied quickly, almost before she had a chance to speak. "It held every day of every life of my past. Aborted timeline, sure, but everything up to my regeneration on Trenzalore was the same."

Clara nodded, attempting to wrap her mind around a question that had plagued her for the last few minutes. "Okay, so if we're talking about aborted timelines, then how can I still exist here?"

Her question was met with silence. The Doctor's eyes were pined onto hers. Perhaps he was silently beckoning her to go on...?

"You found me because my echoes found you," she continued. "_How_ can I have echoes when now, your time stream never existed?"

"Ah, but you see," he explained, pointing a finger at her, "that's where you're wrong. My time stream always existed. Time is never erased, and separate realities can influence others. And one choice, one cry for help-" he looked pointedly at her, apparently in full knowledge as to her actions on Trenzalore- "...is all it takes to change the entire course of time. It's like a bit error in computer data; the rest simply adjusts to compensate."

"Hold on- are you saying I'm a bit error?" Clara asked, gasping in mock offense.

He nodded. "A very large, significant one, yes. And you're the best bit error I've ever had the pleasure of knowing," he added quickly, before she could reach out to playfully smack his arm.

She snorted. "Nice job digging yourself out of your own grave."

"Who said there'll be any digging to do at my grave?" he retorted, with a twinkle in his eyes.

**~8~**

_{A few hours earlier}_

The Doctor quietly shut the door to Clara's hospital room, not wanting to wake her up again. He didn't know how she'd gotten hurt, but she needed her rest. And, he wasn't supposed to be here anyways. He had to reach the TARDIS, and quickly pilot himself back to Trenzalore. This wasn't his time anymore. The clock's fingers were inching ever closer to twelve's. He felt regeneration energy brimming inside, waiting below the surface to rearrange all the cells in his body.

He walked down the clinical white hallway, his purpose set at the forefront of his mind. He only realized where he was when he noticed one of the feline nurses plodding past him. This was the best hospital on New Earth, just on the outskirts of New New York City. Something buried deep in his memory prompted him to wonder if he had been here before- as these halls seemed eerily familiar- but if he had, it must have been a long, long time ago. Hundreds of years. He'd spent so much time in Christmas that sometimes it was hard to remember his life before the siege.

An older man with grey hair approached from around the corner, almost colliding headfirst with him. From the right angle, his hair seemed to have a slight curl to it, (though maybe that was because it was short), and his attire was smart and functional: a white-collar shirt underneath a cardigan, and a nice navy blue jacket thrown over it, with only the top button fastened. They kept eye contact for only a second, the Doctor's green eyes locked onto his steely blue ones. Truth be told, the Doctor only paused to notice because of the eyes. They were old, _really_ old. As he thought about this, his hearts dropped.

He quickly made the mental connections, and swallowed heavily. It probably was best he returned to the TARDIS now, and thank her for finding Clara for him so he could say goodbye. His future was catching up with him sooner than he liked, and he had a list of assorted things to complete. With any luck, he would at least reach item twenty on the list before he regenerated, so he could enjoy his last dish of fish custard.

**~8~**

_Mum,_

_To be honest, I often wish you could be here on this journey with me. I know... if you could respond, you'd tell me to stop moping over you and live a great life, and don't get me wrong, I am... but I miss you. I miss your bedtime stories, and our picture hunts in the clouds, and the way your smile lit up the room._

_It's morning now, the twelfth of January. Or, it would be if I were home. Here on New Earth, I'm told; they measure the months and the seasons very differently. You'd love it here. The view from my window is beautiful. Fields of rich green grass stretch as far as the eye can see, and a futuristic city skyline rises above a small lake. However beautiful it is, my muscles are still getting antsy. I only have to spend one more day in this hospital- just for precautions, the Doctor told me- and then I can leave, off to new horizons._

_Speaking of the Doctor, he's managed to regain almost all of his memories. It was the remnants of his time stream- the faint whispers of every day he'd ever lived- that triggered it. It's been an adventure for both him and me adjusting to all the changes in his life- new body, new tastes, new fetishes- but considering what we went through, I believe we fared very well. Because, when all is said and done, and I think of Trenzalore, I remember that things could have turned out way worse._

_I feel as if I've come to terms with a lot in the past few weeks, even if I can only remember vague fragments of it all, but there's one constant realization that's stuck out to me:_

_Change happens. I've always had a hard time accepting it, but it's a part of life. If everything stayed the same, nothing new would ever start, and what a boring existence that would be! The trick, I've learned, is accepting this change. Fully accepting the changes in my life might take me a while, but I'm beginning to understand new wisdom now. You can't cling to the past forever._

_All you can do is live on... and remember._

_Love you always,_

_Clara Oswald_

* * *

**This is the first time I've finished a multi-chapter story. That's pretty exciting for me... I've never felt so much satisfaction in pressing a single "complete" button before. Thanks to everyone who followed/favorited/reviewed! :-)**


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